I got to thinking and decided that it would be helpful to pass along some observations regarding Legends. So here they are!

Your race is the most important factor of all, deciding what advantages and disadvantages you will have. For example, you should carefully note such things as what character types are more or less likely to appear, and things like the Teekan warships being smaller or the Naxillians being denied armor. A good all round race to play is Humans until you know the ropes. I played a Teekan for my first empire (abandoned), but will be playing humans for my second.

Your Leader is extremely important! Take careful notice of your Leader when you start a game. Assign your colony governor to your home world, and set your spy to counterespionage. When you get a diplomat send him to your problem empire when you get contact. Assign your admirals to fleets and your generals to troop fleets. Be very hesitant to dismiss a character, generally you can shuffle one who looks bad to where he does no harm.

Your initial conditions are also extremely important, lack of good steel mines, aculon, carbon fibre, polymer, and of course the fuel caslon and hydrogen in your home system or very nearby are (for me) no show game starts. I reject games without at least 17 of the 19 mineral resources within the explored territory at game start for a young civilization. I save starts where the home system has at least 13 different minerals and at least three luxuries, then when I get about twenty saves, I choose the best. A home territory with two different races of independent colonies is best, indicating that you are at the border between two sets of independent colonies. Try to get ocean and swamp independent races since polymer and carbon fibre are critical resources to be gained from independents able to quickly build a spaceport.

As I noted in another thread, the more AI civilizations in the galaxy, the easier it will be to make money by technology trading. Once you start trading technology with two or three other empires, it becomes profitable to crash research techs for resale at ten percent or better of market price. Tech sells for less in Legends than in RotS, so if you are used to getting twice the number of technology points in cash for the first sale, it will be a surprise. Speaking of trading, you start relations poorly due to your "strange alien ways", but that disadvantage slowly reduces over time. My rule of thumb is to immediately give military refueling and mining rights plus about 600k worth of technology sold by giving gifts to the AI empire then getting the cash back. Keep them relatively poor compared to you, but not flat broke. Always negotiate package deals, and trade your empire map for the first three to four years. Never trade your galaxy map and always buy theirs. I don't know if it is a feature now, but I got contact by clicking on systems in the newly explored territory when an AI empire traded its galaxy map to me, provided there was some property of another empire in the map. So meeting one AI can reveal several if their territories are close together. If an empire has a racial tech, buy the first level but don't buy the later ones unless you have a couple dozen techs to sell them. That way if they learn a non racial tech you will have something to trade for it. They start to trade racial techs at about +32 or so of happiness, friendly or delighted. Do not conquer an empire until it has sold you all of its racial techs and built any racial wonders.

Speaking of wonders, other than the shipyard you don't really need to get them all. Let the AI empires build them on their home worlds, then conquer the home worlds (evil laugh). If you buy a wonder and somebody else builds it, you get technology points for about the same number as the cash you spent.

I tried out the 15x15 map and did not like it due to the long distances between empires set for average distance. If you play the 15x15 map be sure to set up pirates to plentiful and nearby, otherwise you will have difficulty getting enough reputation to conquer more than two independent colonies per game year without a nasty reputation. If you play the 15x15 map it is essential for you to have at least four steel, lead, gold, iridium mines and plenty (8-10) of fuel gas mines within the first three years, otherwise things will not get built, including mines. Mining engines need steel and aculon, so be sure to get an aculon mine ASAP. Gas extractors need steel and polymer, so be sure you have polymer! Colonization modules need lots of steel and hydrogen, and hydrogen fusion reactors are MUCH more fuel efficient than Caslon reactors… Engines will be requiring carbon fibre and aculon as you learn technology, in quantity, so be sure to have plenty. Did I mention that steel is essential? lol

Scale factor is determined at game creation by the difficulty setting, with more difficulty generating less money for you and more for the AI players. Of course if you manage the AI empires through trading things you get their money regardless, so perhaps a setting of maximum difficulty would generate more galactic economy than on normal. I have not tried that out...

Population grows faster when luxuries are high and taxes are low. Population growth rate is doubled as you learn colonization techs, see the high tech tree. The upper limit for population at a planet is determined by both planet size and planet type (continental…volcanic). I have only reached maximum population at my home world and a volcanic independent Shandar moon colony, but generally speaking you should tax at 14% or less to encourage population growth. Taxing at zero percent if you can manage it is much faster population growth than at 14%. Taxes affect colony happiness, and happiness affects troop recruitment rate. Taxes have all sorts of bad effects, so tax only if you MUST. By letting the civilians have the cash, you get it back when they buy ships, THEN you use it to buy empire things. So if you did not tax at all, you would get the money anyway PROVIDED your empire is expanding quickly. More to come on taxes below…

Planet Quality is critically important, with a 90% being twice as good as a 70%, and a 70% being twice as good as a 60%. Watch out for disasters which lower planet quality. A nice improvement to game play is the terraforming facility to restore lost quality. If you see a low quality planet, consider colonizing it only if its resources are very valuable. Then once your spaceport is built, build a custom design starbase with mining components to get the resources mined faster. The rate at which resources are mined is determined by their abundance percentage and the number of mining units multiplied by the rate per mining unit. The construction tech tree allows you to learn tech to mine much faster, so learning that tech should be a high priority. Planet quality has no effect upon the rate at which you mine resources, just on revenue. As a quick note on mine design, you should have cargo bays of size sufficient to hold all of the mined resources from six months of operation, since freighter visits may be rare. As your mining rates increase, the cargo bays per mine need to be increased. I custom design everything, but if you let the auto-design do your mines, it should get a good ratio cargo to mining rate. You also need enough docking bays to shift all that cargo, generally six to nine.

Planet development level is based upon population size up to a maximum of 50%, luxuries up to 50% for ten, special racial luxury bonuses, ruins and wonder bonuses, leader bonuses, colony governor bonuses, empire wide bonuses etc. In general the higher the development level the better. The super luxuries Loros Fruit, Kobabbian Spice, and Zentabia Fluid increase development level by 30 percent as soon as they are in cargo. For other luxuries your rate of increase is about 19 development points per year, provided the luxuries are in stock to raise your level above the current one. Development level can be reduced by government change or invasion. Government change also kills off ten percent of population in RotS, but I haven't changed government in Legends to verify that it does the same.

Corruption is based upon population size, distance from the capital or a regional capital, and total empire size. It is better to have four tight groups of large high quality colonies than a dispersed empire. So as a little hint, look for clusters of AI empires near each other and plan conquest to hit the biggest clusters first, nominal friend or foe regardless. Starting a war costs about the same reputation as invading an independent colony. A good rule of thumb is that you need four times the number of troops on a colony plus twenty good troops in order to win a battle in a reasonable amount of time. Be sure to put a couple thousand shields and a shield area recharge on your troop transports. I built the troop transports with ten and sixteen massive troop modules at size 800 in my last RotS game…

Bonuses are primarily an empire wide bonus from your leader, and a colony specific bonus from your colony governor. If both increase your income, that's GREAT! I have heard that there is a character trait of famous or some such, which attracts new characters faster, but have not seen one yet. If you get a game start with a famous leader, it is definitely a start to consider playing. You also get a bonus on income from having certain races in your empire, especially Teekan.

The Free Trade and alliance agreements create money out of thin air, but it has never been higher than 200k for me, so although the alliance of 30% versus 20% is nice, I generally just have free trade agreements. As discussed in another thread, resorts provide income too, but I never got more than 200k per year despite high hopes, so build a resort for mining the special high value (named gold and dilithium) asteroids and let it go at those.

Money is destroyed forever by construction and maintenance fees, maintenance being 1/5 of build cost at current resource prices. Maintenance fees can triple or worse due to inflation of resource costs if you create a shortage by building too many ships, bases, or mines at one time. The expansion planner often says that there is a shortage greatly in excess of your actual demand (cargo reserved column), either due to a flaw in its logic or due to an estimation of your future supply needs far in excess of your current ones. As SOON as inflation raises the cost of a resource above 0.8, start working on fixing the problem. It can't get worse than 2.5 but you can still make the entire galactic economy grind to a halt by building too much at once. Your civilians buy one miner, one gas miner, two large, four medium, and five small freighters and a passenger transport or two for every colony in your empire. So if your spaceport queues are backlogged two or three times the number of yards, STOP invading planets and colonizing! Always build a spaceport, but put just the essentials on it and start off with a small one unless you blew up a home world spaceport, in which case rebuild with a small one and upgrade later to a large one. The size of a spaceport should be based upon how well supplied with resources a system is and the density of spaceports and resources developed nearby rather than population size.

The best defenses for a colony are the facilities fortified bunker, giant ion cannon, and planetary shield with plenty of clone troops, not a super fortress spaceport. Maintenance for clone troops is less than for elite troops, see the high tech tree for the cloning facility. Clones recruit at the same speed as troops and CAN'T be of less strength than your maximum strength troop at the time they were recruited, PROVIDED your maximum troop was at a colony rather than on a troop transport. Maximum clone strength was in the neighborhood of 400, or 30000 (depending on which number you look at) in RotS.

Speaking of troops, invade with as many as possible simultaneously by using move to colony of system rather than attack colony. Once all of your troop ships are in position use pause and tell their fleet or each ship to attack planet colony. That way you get the maximum troop experience per invasion, and your troop fleet just keeps on getting stronger rather than being bogged down in long conflicts. You lose about four reputation points per independent colony invasion. Destroying a pirate base yields about two reputation points, QED… You want to destroy lots of pirate bases. In RotS the maximum reputation you could get is Heroic +33 with the Guardians, but I don't know what it might be in Legends since I just invaded another independent as soon as I got a few plus points. Do NOT put ANY type of bombardment weapon on your troop transports, it will cost you in reputation AND lost population and planet quality…

Money is destroyed forever by crash research and corruption. HOWEVER, if the galactic economy can stand it, crash research using money gleaned by trading technology to other empires can be very effective IF you do it on productivity enhancing technologies, especially mining under construction and commerce centers under high tech. Commerce centers create money out of thin air in the same manner as trade agreements, and for a heavily industrialized galaxy can be about 1/4 as significant an income source as revenue. Troops may be a drain on your economy as noted in the Galactopedia, but I never was able to recruit so many that they were more than 1/4 my total expenses. Troops are far more effective for colony security than heavily armed spaceports. My troop transports laughed and landed on enemy home worlds defended by large upgraded spaceports, but inadequate troops. So how many troops are enough? My rule of thumb is five per billion population, minimum five, maximum 60. Since you should have colonies in clusters near a capitol, then troops can be loaded from nearby colonies and sent to reinforce if someone dares to invade. Speaking of invasions, if you attack the Guardians, they never will negotiate to end trade sanctions or a war. To take their home world, assemble a fleet with 200+ troops and tell it to move to their home world. Once in place, THEN you attack. Otherwise you will be stopped far away from their colony, being dropped out of warp by their defenses, and massacred by their home fleet and nearby warships. I managed to land 128 troops on their home in RotS year 9, but gave up on that game at six months into the invasion. It seems they had some loaded troop transports squirreled away waiting for just such a contingency, not just the troops on planet. lol

It is FAR more effective to crash research when you are researching at your full potential than immediately at the start of a game. As soon as your constructors have loaded supplies for their first project, build a custom starbase to do 100k/100k/100k or more research, incidentally adding extra docking bays and mining your home world according to your preferences. Speaking of constructors, examine your empire resources being mined at start of game and determine what that first project set should be VERY carefully! In some cases you might want three steel mines, in others one steel, one aculon, and one polymer etc. But DON'T let your constructors do work until you have analyzed your situation. This of course assumes that you micro-manage constructors like I do, and design your own mines. I can tell you from painful experience that failure to manage strategic resources and having shortages early in the game can prevent your constructors from getting their SECOND assigned projects done after two years of waiting for supplies. If your spaceport has supplies which your constructor lacks, you can tell the constructor to stop then do a repair on the mine, at which point it will go to the spaceport for supplies. BUT if the spaceport never has supplies because it spent them all on civilian ship purchases due to your conquering independent colonies too quickly, causing the civilians to buy ships, then the constructors can't GET any supplies to build the mines needed to get the supplies for building the spaceports at the conquered independent colonies. See my point? Furthermore, independent freighters will shift mined resources from independent colonies defended from pirates by your warships, but NOT from your colonies until they build a spaceport. So moderate your lust for conquest, and colonize the non-independent colonies, letting your troops conquer just one or two independents per year until your economy is up to speed. Those independents should be the ones who supply strategic resources, let the luxuries be delivered from the others by independent freighter.

So you have lots of money, and decided to expand your military? Think twice! Depending on your situation, you might not HAVE the resources for building both the civilian ships and new military for expanding your empire. My rule of thumb is that every colony should have a heavy firepower destroyer or free cruiser to defend it, fast enough to chase down pirates. If you don't have enough to do that, then maybe you should not conquer or colonize so fast and just build constructors and do mining for a while. IF there is ANY backlog of civilian ships waiting to be built in spaceport queues DON'T buy empire ships! There are seven supply depots / strategic reserves in the galaxy. Find those and build military there, about 7-12 big ships per zone spaceport. Or send a constructor to repair ships at a debris field where you have a spaceport built at a colony nearby. DON'T compete with the civilians for build queue time, you'll regret it!

In every cluster around a capital of your empire, have at least two and preferably four ships armed to the teeth for destroying pirate bases. There is a chance that another pirate faction will join your empire every time you destroy a pirate base. At nine years into my RotS game, I had 30 such former pirate bases. Whenever a pirate faction joins, immediately select its bases and do a fighters upgrade. Then check the military ships list for the last ships to find all the former pirates on auto. Send them to the nearest former pirate base, NOT to a colony system. It turns out that former pirates can scare off civilian ships, either through a design feature or a code bug, and I have had warships of other empires fire upon former pirate ships, causing friction in relations. If you already have a good ship guarding a former pirate base, then scrap the pirate ships at the base to get rid of them. Soon a freighter will arrive to pickup the recovered resources. Former pirate bases are an outstanding asset! By clicking on explored systems on the sector map, you can locate pirate bases not yet flagged as known. It also helps a LOT to have long range scanners or deep space arrays at all your systems, and cycle through your planets at least once every 19 days in the sector view to see if there are any incoming pirate ships. Since they fly directly from their base to a colony or mine, it only takes a couple of minutes to find the base where the vermin originated…

What's with the 19 days mentioned twice now? It turns out that technology is learned and troops are recruited on a 19 day cycle. It looks like revenue is collected every second 19 day cycle, and civilians buy ships on a 19 day cycle. Just another mystery to ponder, and subject to change without notice. 19x19 = 361days, maybe that is relevant.

Your empire corruption can be determined by looking at a small colony in the same system as a capitol, for which all of the corruption is based on empire. Once your empire corruption reaches ten percent it makes sense to take a breather from conquest and colonization and develop your existing empire. To keep the AI empires busy as you gather your strength, sell all of them your galaxy map so that they can colonize the crumbs. When you are ready to take your first cluster of AI empires, or think you are, check the situation as determined by your victory conditions. Do they contribute the most population, or number of colonies, or revenue? If not then check somewhere else. This assumes that your victory conditions are something like having 80% of all three of those…

If you supply fuel enough, then AI empire's freighters will flock to you in large numbers, bringing with them sorely needed supplies and luxuries. If you don't have fuel resources at a system, then DON'T build anything bigger than a two yard spaceport, since it will constantly be running out of fuel for new ships. Try to colonize all of the continental and marshy swamp planets in your zone of control, keeping temptation away from AI empires. Try to colonize based upon resources rather than potential taxes at the late game stage, since those colonies will never get large. In the early game definitely go for high quality planet colonization and high population conquests.

Well, typing this up took eight hours, so I'll just end by saying HAVE FUN!

Thank you! I liked your original DW guide and this is an important update.

Rather than fish for starts, I boost my home planet start and give the AI advantages (assuming I understand what the Galaxy Options actually do for the player and AI - based on the limited guidance in the manual and Galactopedia). This made starting on an fringe star isolated away from the nearest cluster tolerable and I expect it probably means the most critical items are present.

A guide to the Galaxy Options and your opinions would be a great help.

I had understood that nothing the player can build at or on a populated world can impact on the mining rate of the resource(s) on the populated world. Please confirm that building a mining base in orbit of a populated world will increase the mining rate.

Great guide... just not something for a roleplayer like me. I like to follow up on my start location and act regarding to intelligence of leaders and their characteristics and the need of my empire and goverment. But it will surely be appreciated by the fun players.

Thanks for taking the time to write this friend! Would you consider going into more detail on how to assure you have the resources your need ?

That is a tough one, except to say that the expansion planner helps a lot. What you need varies as the game develops because technology makes different component resource requirements. One tedious way to do it it to get out a sheet of paper listing the 19 strategic resources. Make several columns, in the columns you have headers of S freight x 5, M freight x4, L freight x 2, Passenger, miner, gas miner, spaceport, warships, mines, gas mines. In your ship design screen for your current designs select the button for construction summary, which gives the resources required. You crunch the numbers to come up with the total resources required for however many colonies you plan on adding in the next year. Then you compare those requirements to the stock of each resource available according to the expansion planner. You decide what resources to add by colonization or mining within the next year based upon the excess of supplies in stock minus empire demand.

All of which severely detracts from game fun. So say to heck with all that and just depend upon the independent freighters and other empire imports to keep your ship of state afloat. The answer to a later post in this thread asking what I mean by inflation is that normally a resource costs 0.58, but a galactic shortage can raise the cost to 2.5, so when that happens, you have inflation. When carbon fibre, chromium, aculon, steel, dilithium, and polymer are all at 2.5 you have MASSIVE inflation lol.

Lonnie Courtney Clay p.s. keep a close watch on caslon and hydrogen, building more gas mines as soon as they rise above 0.8

Sounds good. Are you sure about this: "90% being twice as good as a 70%, and a 70% being twice as good as a 60%?" I do not doubt you, I just do not get the math.

Also, you state that you upgrade Pirate ports with Fighters. How do you upgrade a pirate port (or any port not at a colony)?

You say to build a custom Starport for research 100/100/100. Would it be easier to just tack-on (retrofit) the starting starbase you have at your home colony with more research labs? Plus, you place you starting scientist at your home port and you get the increase in research right away?

Also, you state that you upgrade Pirate ports with Fighters. How do you upgrade a pirate port (or any port not at a colony)?

I don't think he meant Refit. I think he meant opening the Design window, changing the drop-down box to "Show All Designs", selecting the Pirate port (which will have an "obsolete" asterisk by it), and then clicking on the Upgrade button at the bottom. This will upgrade the design, not the port itself.

quote:

ORIGINAL: balto You say to build a custom Starport for research 100/100/100. Would it be easier to just tack-on (retrofit) the starting starbase you have at your home colony with more research labs? Plus, you place you starting scientist at your home port and you get the increase in research right away?

I assumed that what you said is exactly what he meant. A retrofit counts as a custom design.

Sounds good. Are you sure about this: "90% being twice as good as a 70%, and a 70% being twice as good as a 60%?" I do not doubt you, I just do not get the math.

Also, you state that you upgrade Pirate ports with Fighters. How do you upgrade a pirate port (or any port not at a colony)?

You say to build a custom Starport for research 100/100/100. Would it be easier to just tack-on (retrofit) the starting starbase you have at your home colony with more research labs? Plus, you place you starting scientist at your home port and you get the increase in research right away?

I am not saying you are wrong, I just seek knowledge.

Revenue is based up planet quality minus 50 percent. 60-50 = 10, 70-50 = 20, 20= 2x10. 90-50=40, 70-50=20 40=2x20 LOL Select the pirate base with the selection panel in lower left screen. At the bottom under the selection panel are some buttons. Use the button "manage fighters" Under the next set of options is upgrade all fighters. THAT is what I was talking about, not changing the base design.

I would rather have a research base separate from my spaceport because my experience is that I no longer need it once I have several spaceports, and it is totally obsolete as a base but costs money. So then I scrap it, but if I upgraded or modified my spaceport, that could take a LONG time and I definitely do NOT want to scrap my spaceport just because it gets obsolete...

I would rather have a research base separate from my spaceport because my experience is that I no longer need it once I have several spaceports, and it is totally obsolete as a base but costs money. So then I scrap it, but if I upgraded or modified my spaceport, that could take a LONG time and I definitely do NOT want to scrap my spaceport just because it gets obsolete...

Why not have two Spaceport designs. One with labs and one without. When you want to remove the labs, just refit it to the design without labs. No need to scrap anything. Well, except the lab modules, but the rest of the station remains. Having a separate research base is certainly viable, but it's easier to defend a Spaceport with labs. I use a combination of Spaceports with labs, Spaceports without labs, and Research stations myself.

Select the pirate base with the selection panel in lower left screen. At the bottom under the selection panel are some buttons. Use the button "manage fighters" Under the next set of options is upgrade all fighters. THAT is what I was talking about, not changing the base design.

Oh... That only works if the pirate base already has one or more Fighter Bays on it to begin with. I also thought it upgraded fighters automatically, but maybe that's only with stations I built. I don't think I've even seen a pirate station with a fighter bay.

I noticed something which I had previously overlooked, and am taking the time now to explain it before it becomes so obvious that I overlook the need for newcomers to understand. Here goes!

Galactic Economy in a growing empire 1) Revenue is generated from population. 2) Resources are generated by mines and colonies. 3) Civilians buy ships based upon number of colonies. The number of ships per colony purchased by civilians increased in the latest patch. 4) A quickly expanding empire can be achieved through conquest of independent colonies provided that you destroy pirates fast enough to keep up your reputation. 5) When expanding quickly, it is possible for ship purchases by civilians to occur faster than the revenue from colonies is collected. 6) This causes a shortage of both cash to purchase ships and resources needed to build the ships. 7) As discussed elsewhere, diplomacy with AI to get free trading pacts can be achieved by giving about 600k in cash or technology when you meet them, following a brief period of adjustment until they notice that you gave them mining and refueling rights. 8) All of that is old stuff, now comes the new. Your civilians must BUY resources from the AI empires for their ships to be built. At first this is small, but once inflation sets in with six or eight critical resources pegged at 2.5 per unit, it can add up to 500k plus of purchases per year, far more than spaceport fees for building the ship costs. 9) If you do not look much at the diplomacy screen, you could overlook the drain of cash from your civilians to the civilians of other empires, because the trade bonuses reported in the empire summary screen take into account the free trade treaty percentage. One way that an AI empire uses to improve relations with you is to sell your civilians lots of resources even though the empire profit from the free trade treaty is small. 10) So money flows from your civilians to theirs. They can either tax higher or their civilians can purchase ships faster. It appears that they do both, giving them the ability to expand their empires too. Suddenly everybody in the galaxy is building ships, mines, and spaceports and the entire resource price list heads from 0.8 to 2.5 per unit. 11) You can get about 75% of the nominal value from a poor relations or 95% from a good relations trade of technology for cash. 12) By trading technology for cash, you can drain the coffers of AI empires, slowing their expansion rate. Some of the money is used to do crash research in all three technology areas so that you WILL always have some technology to sell. 13) If an AI empire has no cash on the diplomacy 19 day trading cycle, then give them 10k so that they are not flat broke. This allows them to pay for mines but not for wonders or warships. 14) The 19 days cycle is when your technology is updated, your troops are recruited, and taxes are collected or civilians purchase ships. 15) Speaking of taxes, I do not even tax my home world now that I have 10 million in cash. I get all my money from selling technology to the AI. I am the galactic banker, keeping all of the AI solvent between 10k and 100k cash. 16) Every 19 day trading cycle, I check every AI empire's cash balance by negotiating a trade deal. If they have less than is needed to buy a technology, then I give them 2k cash and my territory map. This ensures that relations improve by about 15-30 points per year up until the maximum relationship is reached. 17) If you have a good diplomat, send that diplomat to the Dhayut, who have the fastest ships. That way you get their freighters to haul cargo for you...

Lonnie Courtney Clay Edit : At near the end of the fourth game year I have 13 colonies, but my home world spaceport queue is backlogged 80 ships waiting to be built. On the other hand, I am about to start building ships from the earliest colonies' newly active spaceports. Only time will tell if I expanded too quickly.

Hello I just dislike tech whoring - gamey gamey exploit !! So, is there some honest method to keep finances afloat ? In my games I don't manage to keep a positive income, even with taxes at an average of 40%... Ships and troops eat it all, even if I don't have big fleets, far from that!

The only major source of income besides selling tech are colonies or mines on the super luxuries - Korobbian Spice, Loros Fruit, and Zentabia Fluid. Use the galaxy map screen (bottom button on bottom right of your computer screen) filter by resources selecting the ones of interest. You can also get a couple hundred thousand per year from resorts. You might build enough mines that you supply most of the galaxy with minerals. In my current game I supply steel, iridium, and gold to the galaxy for about 300 thousand of trade per year. But each super luxury planet will do two million per year of trade. That's about it for cash sources besides taxes, a no-win scenario is to tax your civilians so much that they can't build their civilian fleet to haul your goods...

Is the only guide I wrote so far, and is for the original game, not Shakturi. I was going to write one for Legends, but it is almost Sept and I haven't started. With an expansion coming up, I think I'll skip Legends too and write one early on for the next expansion. I am on my ninth game of Legends but have only had victory screen in two due to upgrades coming during games.

I just finished LCC9 at 50 days of play, my ninth game, and have some insights to present for new players. Nedrear, I'm a micro-managing nitpicking powergamer for sure, because I am unemployed semi-retired and have 12-16 hours per day on my hands to waste. People who only have 10-20 hours per week to play can't play the way I do, looking into every single game event and spending an hour or two planning strategy every 19 day trading cycle... 1) Galaxy creation : I use irregular galaxies but have played a couple of times with spirals, but in all cases I set myself at the core of the map. The furthest I ever played off center map was about 1.5 sectors away, and it was not an outstanding game. Basically you want to be able to send ships from your homeworld to the furthest edge of the galaxy in minimum time and fuel. I play 10x10 1400 system galaxies, tried 15x15 once and did not like it. 2) I set space creatures to none because they just are nuisances which contribute little to the game. The silvermist was the deciding factor for me when they were added, threatening to derail games focused upon expansion and conquest into shooting matches. They also handicap the AI, distracting their warships. 3) I set pirates to normal, used to set them higher but found that just increased the number of ships they get rather than how many pirate bases there are. Pirates are the source of reputation points, giving two per base destroyed, so you need to destroy two bases per conquered independent. That takes a lot of pirates! 4) Expansion starting, difficulty normal, aggression normal, research very cheap 30k, unless I am playing Quameno then cheap 60k. My goal is to learn all technologies by the time I finish the game, in 12 to 15 game years. 5) Colony prevalence abundant, independent alien life teeming, colony influence range 100%. No range restrictions on colonization, because that just hurts the AI expansion. 6) I've tried different races, but the easiest is Ikkuro due to construction speed +25% and s2f7 repair bots. They get a 10% economy boost and a 10% ship maintenance discount too. Those repair bots reduce inflicted damage and repair components quickly. Your ship never again needs to limp into port for repairs! 7) Home system excellent, size starting, tech level starting and give that to every added AI empire. Government Republic, because I'm a republican not a democrat LOL. I add one of every AI race at average distance, which usually places them in a circle around me, more or less due to clumping. Their governments are default unless the default is random in which case they are republics too. Independents are not allowed to form new empires. 8) An easy win is with economy 30%, population 40%, and territory 50% at 75% victory threshold. For that you only need about one war, and maybe not even that. For more challenge set it at 60% economy, 75% population, and 80% territory with threshold of 80%. I disable standard racial victory conditions, because they just handicap the AI. 9) Victory conditions apply after 10 years, enable original game and Shakturi story lines, disable disasters, enable racial events. 10) I generate a couple hundred galaxies for every game I play. It takes a day or two compared to seven weeks to play a game. Basically I want a game where I can develop the galaxy into a star empire to be proud of. I do not save a potential start unless it meets my criteria, which are : 11) If your homeworld is a moon orbiting a gas giant, start another galaxy, because you don't want your freighters chasing the docks all game. Click on the home system. If there are not at least a full line plus a second line of six or more resources, generate another galaxy. If there are fewer than ten total planets plus moons, same. That takes about five seconds to judge. If there is more than one gas cloud with a storm within a sector, start another. 12) Count the number of systems within a sector of your home system, ignoring gas clouds. If there are fewer than 25, start anther game. That takes about 30 seconds. 13) Selecting sector view and plus zooming out three times, look at your position within the galaxy. Does it look like a prosperous neighborhood, with more star systems than gas clouds and few storms? Okay then count the home system strategic resources, and if fewer than 15 of them, start another galaxy, takes another 30 seconds. 14) Open up the expansion planner and check your empire resource locations. If there is no caslon fuel, or less than two steel then discard. Look at the galaxy priority list. If there are less than six total of steel, including all of your steel mines, discard. If there is no fibre, discard. If there is an independent in the potential colonies list, that is a plus! 15) Okay then save and make a note of the file's name and your observations about that potential start. When you have a dozen or two, then go back and look at each judging the total list of potential starts. The process takes 20-30 hours for me, unless I get really lucky and find an outstanding start early. 16) Open up the expansion planner and notice what resources are already mined. How many missing ones can be developed with three constructor projects to start off the game? You need lots of steel and other resources to develop mines. If you design your own as I do, then they may require different resources depending upon your technology. Use the designs screen selecting the mines to notice what they require. Highest priority for mines are those resources required to build mines! Chances are that you will disagree with the three projects already scheduled by your constructors, so change orders appropriately. 17) Your explorers do not need to completely explore systems at game start. Your objective is to find high quality planets and independents within two sectors of your home system, then to contact AI empires so you can start tech trading. Change explorer's orders to move to rather than explore unknown stars and manage them to check out potential colony planets in the systems, then move onwards to the next system. 18) Technology research depends upon your play style, but here is a list of techs researched from LCC9 : Enhanced Construction, Star Fighters, Enhanced Resource Exploration, Missile Weapons, Accelerated Construction (buy Bakuras Shipyards at 50k cash), Proximity Sensors, Ion Weapons, Long Range Scanners (design explorers to look for supply zones and buy three), Component Prefabrication, Countermeasures, Point Defense Weapons, Enhanced Engines, Target Tracking, Rail Gun Weapons, ending first year of research. Now to do that I had to redesign my homeworld spaceport to add lots of labs so that I researched at my full potential and buy an upgrade as my first project... 19) second year : area weapons, enhanced hyperdrives, enhanced transport, light interceptors, high speed hyperdrives, missile bombers, nuclear supercharging, enhanced research (when Bakuras done buy Rusan Technology facility), light torpedo bombers, fast jump hyperdrives from scrapping, quantum exploitation from scrapping (needed for civilian ships), and on 55/08/28 started trading technologies with AI empires so that makes all further research dependent upon game trading. 20) I design my own civilians unarmed and fast so that they can escape from pirates without weapons. The Guardians are offended by armed civilians... 21) Rather than build warships to fight pirates, I pay off the pirates in the first two years of game play. Instead of buying warships, I buy explorers as fast as my money and resources permit. Usually the first bought warships are from supply zones in the second year. At supply zones I buy two sets of six explorers then six destroyers armed to fight pirate bases. For that you need three each of missiles and ion weapons, plus a couple of fighter bays and your best torpedo or beam weapon depending upon technology learned. At supply zones I scrap all of the warships found there as soon as the one day build of the first set of explorers. Hint : the supply zone will immediately build the first set of ships if you refuse to open it at first sighting. Set speed to 1/4 and wait until the date has just changed then open the base and hit pause. Buy the six explorers before going off pause.

Well that is no means everything I could tell but this post is getting long, so maybe I'll add more advice in response to questions later.

In the expansion planner, the list of resources has an underline on the resource names. If you click on a resource name, you get a list of components which use that resource.

Clicking on the selection panel centers the view on the selected item. Double clicking opens up the list of ships and bases at the selected item.

The easiest race is the Ikkuro, they have those repair bots, a homeworld colony governor, and sometimes get scientists. Don't trade the bots to another empire unless you are utterly certain that you will never go to war with them.

The second easiest is Quameno, they have science rates up to four times as fast as a typical empire with all their scientists and the 60 percent racial bonus.

The third easiest is the Ackdarian, with a 60 percent higher construction rate so that the homeworld can spam colony ships and constructors. But beware, it is very easy to run short of strategic resources at which point the production grinds to a halt.

If the dark side attracts you, play as the Dhayut, and don't sell that warp drive till after you have explored all of the galaxy, year five or so.

In my current game I did not enter into any free trade agreements until I had over 50 colonies. This worked quite well since my outlying colonies were able to get resources from the core worlds rather than having the AI buy them out from under my nose. I HATE it when that happens! In my past three games I have not sold my territory map at all, because it turns out that the AI now only buy stuff from me with their freighters, never hauling cargo to my colonies.

It turns out that there is an upper limit on empire corruption of a factor of 1.55 less than the colony revenue after colony corruption. In my current game I checked my corruption at 100 and 130 colonies and there was no change to the factor. I'm going for 250-300 now!